Religion Dispatches
…n for faith healing practices that remains in place in the state’s child abuse and neglect laws. The couple is likely to claim that this conflict in the laws (spiritual healing practices appear to be protected under one part of the criminal code but not under another) violates their right to due process of law. Wisconsin’s “treatment through prayer” provision is not unique: More than thirty other states offer similar kinds of apparent legal protec…
Read More…usive regulation” are “as wrong and immoral and stealing;” and the the tax code should be revamped “so we can rejoice together because it would stimulate economic growth.” But there’s more. There’s good, and there’s evil, and in laying out a parade of evils, Robison lists “radical Islam,” “terrorism” and “extreme environmental activism” all in the same breath. The players in Robison’s meetings reflect this agenda. They include Jim Garlow, the Cali…
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…ry Institute has run away from a school board after members there actually used the word “creationism.” Because of his recent response in American Spectator to the Livingston Parish School Board, I compared Discovery Institute president Bruce Chapman to Monty Python’s Brave Sir Robin. As the song goes, “when danger reared its ugly head, he bravely turned his tail and fled.” Some folks at DI must have taken umbrage. But Mr. Klinghoffer also took ex…
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…ys that he and other board members weren’t trying to ignore slavery as a cause of the Civil War. “There were multiple causes,” he said. Davis’ address, which reads eerily like a Tea Party manifesto, never mentions slavery, but the board makes no mention of teaching its own state’s Ordinance of Secession, which states: (Texas) was received as a commonwealth holding, maintaining and protecting the institution known as negro slavery—the servitude of…
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…ative moral absolute. Indeed, contrary to Vatican theology, the failure to use condoms when one’s spouse is HIV positive is morally wrong. There are many other circumstances where the failure to use artificial contraception could not be morally justified. Abortion is also not seen by Catholic theologians as “intrinsically evil.” The following are cases from real life. Few theologians and few others would accuse these women of sin. Case #1: A woman…
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…ind him. He holds in his right hand a ghostly “Q+” (according to some, the code name Trump himself uses when he posts on Q message boards) and the text reads “The World Will Soon Understand/Nothing Can Stop What is Coming,” a direct reference to “The Storm.” As I wrote back in 2020: The QAnoners’ apocalypse, unsurprisingly, is one of political partisan violence, culminating in “The Storm,” when all of the so-called “deep state leaders” will be arr…
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…that considers the human being in himself as a consumer good, which can be used and then discarded.” The pope’s words speak to the dehumanizing situation of Nike factory workers. People of all races, genders, creeds, ethnicities, and nationalities must form a powerful movement to stop “the Swoosh” from hiding behind excuses and platitudinous ads and “just do it” for their workers. We should applaud the athletes like James, Williams, and Rapinoe in…
Read More…fusal to sign HB 4001, the bill forbidding gay domestic benefits. Palin refused only because she was advised that the bill was unconstitutional, though she did support its intent, and had earlier shown her anti-gay rights colors in her support of a 1998 ban on same-sex marriage, which she defended by saying: “I believe that honoring the family structure is that important” — an emphasis on structure that surely rings true to “pro family” advocates…
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…ding the protocol for who can issue a license if those elected to do so refuse is daunting. If a county clerk, their deputy clerks, and a judge all refuse to sign and issue a marriage license to a same-sex couple, the bill allows the clerk to appoint someone—who need not be employed by or appointed by the state, county, or locality—who can administer the oath and sign the license. Imagine if you’re a same-sex couple living in Texas who has decided…
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…s this common understanding of the relation of religion and politics truly useful? In critiquing the “politicizing” of evangelical Christianity, for example, Prothero implies that evangelicals’ authentic or essential identity is something other than “political,” which is to say, of course, that it is properly “religious.” The notion of “politicized religion” relies on the assumption that religion is apolitical in nature, and that religion and poli…
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